This blog is about giving voice to the voiceless in occupied Palestine by myself and other contributing journalists who have seen first-hand the horror of Israeli apartheid.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Defending Israel from democracy

By Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 5 June 2007

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article7001.shtml

The second Palestinian intifada has been crushed. The700km wall is sealing the occupied population of the WestBank into a series of prisons. The "demographic timebomb"-- the fear that Palestinians, through higher birth rates,will soon outnumber Jews in the Holy Land and thatIsrael's continuing rule over them risks being compared toapartheid -- has been safely defused through thedisengagment from Gaza and its 1.4 million inhabitants. Onthe fortieth anniversary of Israel's occupation of theWest Bank and Gaza, Israel's security establishment isquietly satisfied with its successes.

But like a shark whose physiology requires that, to stayalive, it never sleeps or stops moving, Israel must remainrestless, constantly reinventing itself and its policiesto ensure its ethnic project does not lose legitimacy,even as it devours the Palestinian homeland. By keeping astep ahead of the analysts and worldwide opinion, Israelcreates facts on the ground that cement its supremacistand expansionist agenda.

So, with these achievements under its belt, where next forthe Jewish state?

I have been arguing for some time that Israel's ultimategoal is to create an ethnic fortress, a Jewish space inexpanded borders from which all Palestinians -- includingits 1.2 million Palestinian citizens -- will be excluded.That was the purpose of the Gaza disengagement and it isalso the point of the wall snaking through the West Bank,effectively annexing to Israel what little is left of apotential Palestinian state.

It should therefore be no surprise that we are witnessingthe first moves in Israel's next phase of conquest of thePalestinians. With the 3.7 million Palestinians in theoccupied territories caged inside their ghettos, unable toprotest their treatment behind fences and walls, the turnhas come of Israel's Palestinian citizens.

These citizens, today nearly a fifth of Israel'spopulation, are the legacy of an oversight by thecountry's Jewish leaders during the ethnic cleansingcampaign of the 1948 war. Ever since Israel has beenpondering what to do with them. There was a brief debatein the state's first years about whether they should beconverted to Judaism and assimilated, or whether theyshould be marginalised and eventually expelled. The latterview, favoured by the country's first prime minister,David Ben Gurion, dominated. The question has been whenand how to do the deed.

The time now finally appears to be upon us, and thecrushing of these more than one million unwanted citizenscurrently inside the walls of the fortress -- theAchilles' heel of the Jewish state -- is likely to be justas ruthless as that of the Palestinians under occupation.

In my recent book Blood and Religion, I charted thepreparations for this crackdown. Israel has been secretlydevising a land swap scheme that would force up to aquarter of a million Palestinian citizens (but hardly anyterritory) into the Palestinian ghetoes being crafted nextdoor -- in return Israel will annex swaths of the WestBank on which the illegal Jewish settlements sit. TheBedouin in the Negev are being reclassified as trespasserson state land so that they can be treated as guest workersrather than citizens. And lawyers in the Justice Ministryare toiling over a loyalty scheme to deal with theremaining Palestinians: pledge an oath to Israel as aJewish and democratic state (that is, one in which you arenot wanted) or face being stripped of your rights andpossibly expelled.

There will be no resistance to these moves from Israel'sJewish public. Opinion polls consistently show thattwo-thirds of Israeli Jews support "transfer" of thecountry's Palestinian population. With a veneer oflegality added to the ethnic cleansing, the Jewishconsensus will be almost complete.

But these measures cannot be implemented until animportant first battle has been waged and won in theKnesset, the Israeli parliament. One of Israel's gurus ofthe so-called "demographic threat", Arnon Sofer, aprofessor at Haifa University, has explained the problemposed by the presence of a growing number of Palestinianvoters: "In their hands lies the power to determine theright of return [of Palestinian refugees] or to decide whois a Jew ... In another few years, they will be able todecide whether the state of Israel should continue to be aJewish-Zionist state."

The warning signs about how Israel might defend itselffrom this "threat" have been clear for some time. InSilencing Dissent, a report published in 2002 by the HumanRights Association based in Nazareth, the treatment ofIsrael's 10 Palestinian Knesset members was documented:over the previous two years, nine had been assaulted bythe security services, some on several occasions, andseven hospitalised. The report also found that the statehad launched 25 investigations of the 10 MKs in the sameperiod.

All this abuse was reserved for the representatives of acommunity the Israeli general Moshe Dayan once referred toas "the quietest minority in the world".

But the state's violence towards, and intimidation of,Palestinian Knesset members -- until now largely thereflex actions of officials offended by the presence oflegislators refusing to bow before the principles ofZionism and privileges for Jews -- is entering a new, moredangerous phase.

The problem for Israel is that for the past two decadesPalestinian legislators have been entering the Knesset notas members of Zionist parties, as was the case for manydecades, but as representatives of independent Palestinianparties. (A state claiming to be Jewish and democratic hasto make some concessions to its own propaganda, afterall.)

The result has been the emergence of an unexpectedpolitical platform: the demand for Israel's constitutionalreform. Palestinian political parties have been callingfor Israel's transformation from a Jewish state into a"state of all its citizens" -- or what the rest of uswould call a liberal democracy.

The figurehead for this political struggle has been thelegislator Azmi Bishara. A former philosophy professor,Bishara has been running rings around Jewish politiciansin the Knesset for more than a decade, as well as exposingto outsiders the sham of Israel's self-definition as a"Jewish and democratic" state.

Even more worryingly he has also been making anincreasingly convincing case to his constituency of 1.2million Palestinian citizens that, rather than challengingthe hundreds of forms of discrimination they face one lawat a time, they should confront the system that props upthe discrimination: the Jewish state itself. He hasstarted to persuade a growing number that they will neverenjoy equality with Jews as long as they live in ethnicstate.

Bishara's campaign for a state of all its citizens hasfaced an uphill struggle. Palestinian citizens spent thefirst two decades after Israel's creation living undermartial law, a time during which their identity, historyand memories were all but crushed. Even today the minorityhas no control over its educational curriculum, which isset by officials charged with promoting Zionism, and itsschools are effectively run by the secret police, the ShinBet, through a network of collaborators among the teachersand pupils.

Given this climate, it may not be surprising that in arecent poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute 75per cent of Palestinian citizens said they would supportthe drafting of a constitution defining Israel as a Jewishand democratic state (Israel currently has noconstitution). Interestingly, however, what concernedcommentators was the survey's small print: only a third ofthe respondents felt strongly about their positioncompared to more than half of those questioned in asimilar survey three years ago. Also, 72 per cent ofPalestinian citizens believed the principle of "equality"should be prominently featured in such a constitution.

These shifts of opinion are at least partly a result ofBishara's political work. He has been trying to persuadeIsrael's Palestinian minority -- most of whom, whateverthe spin tells us, have had little practical experience ofparticipating in a democracy other than casting a vote --that it is impossible for a Jewish state to enshrineequality in its laws. Israel's nearest thing to a Bill ofRights, the Basic Law on Freedom and Human Dignity,intentionally does not mention equality anywhere in itstext.

It is in this light that the news about Bishara that brokein late April should be read. While he was abroad with hisfamily, the Shin Bet announced that he would face chargesof treason on his return. Under emergency regulations --renewed by the Knesset yet again last week, and which havenow been in operation for nearly 60 years -- he could beexecuted if found guilty. Bishara so far has chosen not toreturn.

Coverage of the Bishara case has concentrated on the twomain charges against him, which are only vaguely known asthe security services have been trying to preventdisclosure of their evidence with a gagging order. Thefirst accusation -- for the consumption of Israel's Jewishpopulation -- is that Bishara actively helped Hizbullah inits targeting of Israeli communities in the north duringthe war against Lebanon last summer.

The Shin Bet claims this after months of listening in onhis phone conversations -- made possible by a change inthe law in 2005 that allows the security services to buglegislators' phones. The other Palestinian MKs suspectthey are being subjected to the same eavesdropping afterthe Attorney-General Mechahem Mazuz failed to respond to aquestion from one, Taleb a-Sana, on whether the Shin Betwas using this practice more widely.

Few informed observers, however, take this allegationseriously. An editorial in Israel's leading newspaperHaaretz compared Bishara's case to that of the IsraeliJewish dissident Tali Fahima, who was jailed on trumped-upcharges that she translated a military plan, a piece ofpaper dropped by the army in the Jenin refugee camp, onbehalf of a Palestinian militant, Zacharia Zbeidi, eventhough it was widely known that Zbeidi was himself fluentin Hebrew.

The editorial noted that it seemed likely the charge oftreason against Bishara "will turn out to be a tendentiousexaggeration of his telephone conversations and meetingswith Lebanese and Syrian nationals, and possibly also ofhis expressions of support for their military activities.It seems very doubtful that MK Bishara even has access todefense-related secrets that he could sell to the enemy,and like in the Fahima case, the fact that he identifiedwith the enemy during wartime appears to be what fueledthe desire to seek and find an excuse for bringing him totrial."

Such doubts were reinforced by reports in the Israelimedia that the charge of treason was based on claims thatBishara had helped Hizbullah conduct "psychologicalwarfare through the media".

The other allegation made by the secret police has adifferent target audience. The Shin Bet claims thatBishara laundered money from terrorist organisations. Theimplication, though the specifics are unclear, is thatBishara both helped fund terror and that he squirrelledsome of the money away, possibly hundreds of thousands ofdollars, presumably for his own benefit. This is supposedto discredit him with his own constituency of Palestiniancitizens.

It should be noted that none of this money has been foundin extensive searches of Bishara's home and office, andthe evidence is based on testimony from a far fromreliable source: a family of money-changers in EastJerusalem.

This second charge closely resembles the allegations facedby the only other Palestinian of national prominence inIsrael, Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Islamic Movementand a spiritual leader of the Palestinian minority. He wasarrested in 2003, originally on charges that he launderedmoney for the armed wing of Hamas, helping them buy gunsand bombs.

As with Bishara, the Shin Bet had been bugging Salah'severy phone call for many months and had supposedlyaccumulated mountains of evidence against him. Salah spentmore than two years in jail, the judges repeatedlyaccepting the Shin Bet's advice that his requests for bailbe refused, as this secret evidence was studied in minutedetail at his lengthy trial. In the closing stages, as itbecame clear that the Shin Bet's case was evaporating, theprosecution announced a plea bargain. Salah agreed(possibly unwisely, but understandably after two years injail) to admit minor charges of financial impropriety inreturn for his release.

To this day, Salah does not know what he did wrong. Hisorganisation had funded social programmes for orphans,students and widows in the occupied territories and hadsubmitted its accounts to the security services forapproval. In a recent interview, Salah observed that inthe new reality he and his party had discovered that itwas "as if helping orphans, sick persons, widows andstudents had now become illegal activities in support ofterrorism".

Why was Salah targeted? In the same interview, he notedthat shortly before his arrest the prime minister of theday, Ariel Sharon, had called for the outlawing of theIslamic Movement, whose popularity was greatly concerningthe security establishment. Sharon was worried by what heregarded as Salah's interference in Israel's crushing ofPalestinian nationalism.

Sharon's concern was two-fold: the Islamic Movement wasraising funds for welfare organisations in the occupiedterritories at the very moment Israel was trying toisolate and starve the Palestinian population there; andSalah's main campaign, "al-Aqsa is in danger", wassuccessfully rallying Palestinians inside Israel to visitthe mosques of the Noble Sanctuary in the Old City ofJersualem, the most important symbols of a futurePalestinian state.

Salah believed that responsibility fell to Palestiniansinside Israel to protect these holy places as Israel'sclosure policies and its checkpoints were preventingMuslims in the occupied territories from reaching them.Salah also suspected that Israel was using the exclusionof Palestinians under occupation from East Jerusalem toassert its own claims to sovereignty over the site, knownto Jews as Temple Mount. This was where Sharon had madehis inflammatory visit backed by 1,000 armed guards thattriggered the intifada; and it was control of the TempleMount, much longed for by his predecessor, Ehud Barak,that "blew up" the Camp David negotiations, as one ofBarak's advisers later noted. Salah had become a nuisance,an obstacle to Israel realising its goals in EastJersualem and possibly in the intifada, and needed to beneutralised

Salah had become a nuisance, an obstacle to Israelrealising its goals in East Jersualem and possibly in theintifada, and needed to be neutralised. The trial removedhim from the scene at a key moment when he might have beenable to make a difference.

That now is the fate of Bishara.

Indications that the Shin Bet wanted Bishara's scalp overhis campaign for Israel's reform to a state of all itscitizens can be dated back to at least the start of thesecond intifada in 2000. That was when, as Israel preparedfor a coming general election, the departing head of theShin Bet observed: "Bishara does not recognise the rightof the Jewish people to a state and he has crossed theline. The decision to disqualify him [from standing forelection] has been submitted to the Attorney General." Whoexpressed that view? None other than Ami Ayalon, currentlycontesting the leadership of the Labor party and hoping tobecome the official head of Israel's peace camp.

In the meantime, Bishara has been put on trial twice(unnoticed the charges later fizzled out); he has beencalled in for police interrogations on a regular basis; hehas been warned by a state commission of inquiry; and thelaws concerning Knesset immunity and travel to foreignstates have been changed specifically to prevent Bisharafrom fulfilling his parliamentary duties.

True to Ayalon's advice, Bishara and his political party,the National Democratic Assembly (NDA), were disqualifiedby the Central Elections Committee during the 2003elections. The committee cited the "expert" opinion of theShin Bet: "It is our opinion that the inclusion of the NDAin the Knesset has increased the threat inherent in theparty. Evidence of this can also be found in theideological progress from the margins of Arab society(such as a limited circle of intellectuals who dealt withthese ideas theoretically) to center stage. Today theseideas [concerning a state of all its citizens] have adiscernible effect on the content of political discourseand on the public 'agenda' of the Arab sector."

But on this occasion the Shin Bet failed to get its way.Bishara's disqualification was overturned on appeal by anarrow majority of the Supreme Court's justices.

The Shin Bet's fears of Bishara resurfaced with avengeance in March this year, when the Ma'ariv newspaperreported on a closed meeting between the Prime Minister,Ehud Olmert, and senior Shin Bet officials "concerning theissue of the Arab minority in Israel, the extent of itssteadily decreasing identification with the State and therise of subversive elements".

Ma'ariv quoted the assessment of the Shin Bet:"Particularly disturbing is the growing phenomenon of'visionary documents' among the various elites of IsraeliArabs. At this time, there are four different visionarydocuments sharing the perception of Israel as a state ofall citizens and not as a Jewish state. The isolationistand subversive aims presented by the elites mightdetermine a direction that will win over the masses."

In other words, the secret police were worried that theinfluence of Bishara's political platform was spreading.The proof was to be found in the four recent documentscited by the Shin Bet and published by very diffrerentgroups: the Democratic Constitution by the Adalah legalcentre; the Ten Points by the Mossawa political lobbyinggroup; the Future Vision by the traditionally conservativepolitical body comprising mostly mayors known as the HighFollow-Up Committee; and the Haifa Declaration, overseenby a group of academics known as Mada.

What all these documents share in common is twoassumptions: first, that existing solutions to theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict are based on two states andthat in such an arrangement the Palestinian minority willcontinue living inside Israel as citizens; and second,that reforms of Israel are needed if the state is torealise equality for all citizens, as promised in itsDeclaration of Independence.

Nothing too subversive there, one would have thought. Butthat was not the view of the Shin Bet.

Following the report in Ma'ariv, the editor of a weeklyArab newspaper wrote to the Shin Bet asking for moreinformation. Did the Shin Bet's policy not constitute anundemocratic attempt to silence the Palestinian minorityand its leaders, he asked. A reply from the Shin Bet wasnot long in coming. The secret police had a responsibilityto guard Israel "against subversive threats", it wasnoted. "By virtue of this responsibility, the Shin Bet isrequired to thwart subversive activity by elements whowish to harm the nature of the State of Israel as ademocratic Jewish State -- even if they act by means ofdemocratically provided tools -- by virtue of theprinciple of 'defensive democracy'."

Questioned by Israeli legal groups about this policy whenit became public, the head of the Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin,wrote a letter clarifying what he meant. Israel had to beprotected from anyone "seeking to change the state's basicprinciples while abolishing its democratic character orits Jewish character". He was basing his opinion on a lawpassed in 2002 that charges the Shin Bet with safeguardingthe country from "threats of terror, sabotage,subversion".

In other words, in the view of the Shin Bet, a Jewish anddemocratic state is democratic only if you are a Jew or aZionist. If you try to use Israel's supposed democracy tochallenge the privileges reserved for Jews inside a Jewishstate, that same state is entitled to defend itselfagainst you.

The extension in the future of this principle from Bisharato the other Palestinian MKs and then on to the widerPalestinian community inside Israel should not be doubted.In the wake of the Bishara case, Israel Hasson, a formerdeputy director of the Shin Bet and now a right-wingKnesset member, described Israel's struggle against itsPalestinian citizens as "a second War of Independence" --the war in 1948 that founded Israel by cleansing it of 80per cent of its Palestinians.

The Shin Bet is not, admittedly, a democratic institution,even if it is operating in a supposedly democraticenvironment. So how do the state's more accountableofficials view the Shin Bet's position? Diskin's reply hada covering letter from Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz,the country's most senior legal officer. Mazuz wrote: "Theletter of the Shin Bet director was written incoordination with the attorney general and with hisagreement, and the stance detailed in it is acceptable tothe attorney general."

So now we know. As Israel's Palestinian politicians havelong been claiming, a Jewish and democratic state isintended as a democracy for Jews only. No one else isallowed a say -- or even an opinion.

Jonathan Cook, a journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, isthe author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of theJewish and Democratic State (Pluto Press, 2006). Hiswebsite is www.jkcook.net.

1 comment:

Israel, like the U.S. is run by a group of psychopaths who have their own agenda and are willing to complete it at all costs.

I think that another good article, that compliments this one is "An Answer to the Israel Lobby - Ponerology". It can be read here:

http://tinyurl.com/2mwdlo

If we are to do anything to get this world back from the craziness that it is in, this article, and the book it talks about, are essential for all of us to read and learn about. We can make a difference if we only educate ourselves about what is really going on in this world.